The Syrian War Has Arrived At Assad's Coastal Retreat

Local people describe it as a distant growl, an ever-present
rumble, just to the north. A reminder that war is now at their
doorstep.

It has been this way for two months in Latakia. The port city had
managed to ride out Syria's civil war, seemingly content in the
knowledge that whatever was happening in Hama to the south-east,
or Idlib a little further north, an army stood between its gates
and its foes. Not any more.

The spectre of war is now a reality here in the staunch core of
the regime heartland, as much as it is in the rebellious and
ravaged Sunni cities to the east. The shells that crunch most
hours into the nearby countryside have not yet arrived. But the
fear that pervades the communities on the fringes of Latakia is
now spreading around the city known throughout the country as the
government's stronghold, and possibly its last redoubt.

"We are afraid, very, very afraid," said Loubna, a final-year
university student and resident of the city. "For so long the
regime has been saying we will be safe here. That nothing will
happen to us. Nothing can happen to us. But people are leaving,
people are dying. Death is so near."

As the insurgency has blazed into nearly every corner of Syria,
Latakia has stood resolute as a distant and almost unobtainable
target, protected by some of the Syrian military's most
formidable forces and diehard militias. Business still ticks
over. With the engine room of the country's ecomomy – Aleppo –
having ground to a halt, Latakia has stepped partly into the
breach, all the while remaining the playground of Syria's wealthy
elite and a refuge for its establishment.

President Bashar al-Assad has a palace on the coast and many of
his generals keep villas here. Members of Syria's fractured
opposition, as well as western states calling for Assad to be
ousted, often claim that Latakia will be a last redoubt for key
regime figures and the Alawite sect, from which much of Syria's
power base is drawn.

Over the past two months, the influx of Alawites from the
increasingly besieged villages to the north is slowly
transforming the city into just such a sanctuary.

"The wolves are at the door," said an Alawite refugee in the
Turkish border town of Reyhanli. "Even Qardaha is not safe any
more."

Qardaha is the ancestral home of the Assad family. It is where
the late dictator and architect of Syria's uncompromising social
and military doctrine, Hafez al-Assad, is buried, in an
immaculately kept shrine maintained by an honour guard. It was
never supposed to be under threat of attack.

But 12km to the north, in the mountains of Jebel al-Krud, a giant
plateau that soars above Latakia and Tartous to the south, rebel
groups now have Qardaha in their sites.

The frontline of the war for the cultural plain, and regime's
heart, is several kilometres below them. Warplanes swarm here
like mosquitoes. After dark, it is the helicopters' turn to roam
above the ink-black plateau, the distant whump of their rotor
blades a harbinger of the spine-chilling terror that inevitably
follows, in the form of large barrels of explosives pushed from
their open doors.

"We can tell when they're falling now," said a young, almost
nonchalant rebel who had returned from the frontline that carves
jaggedly between lush green undergrowth and the crumbling remains
of a grey concrete village. "They are bombing Salma [a frontline
village] at the moment, because they think that the battle for
Qardaha will be launched from there. We're more interested in
Latakia."

So, too, are jihadist groups, first among them the
al-Qaida-aligned Jabhat al-Nusra, who are now congregating around
20km north of Latakia and making plans to advance. "There are
around 300-400 of them," said a rebel commander in the hills not
far away. "They have their eyes on the gold and jewellery stores.
They are more interested in here than in Idlib, or Aleppo."

Not all those under fire are seeking refuge in Latakia. Some
families, the few that remain in the battleground villages of
Jebel al-Krud, are trying to make their way north to Turkey. In
one such village, the custodian of the town's Orthodox church
offered the Observer a tour of the ancient stone
building that she so clearly cherished.

There was little in the way of an oral history, though. She
slowly made her way to the centre of the church and, before she
had spoken a word, broke down in tears of unrestrained grief. A
Muslim neighbour offered her an arm of comfort, but her tears
would not stop. Later, she said that her face had recently
appeared on a US television network and that she could no longer
travel to Latakia without fear of persecution. Falling foul of
the regime is a constant dread among those on the move, and
especially for those who stay behind.

Abu Yousef and his two sons have chosen to remain in their mixed
Sunni-Christian village. They are one of only 10 families to do
so. A church sits alongside a mosque here. Both have been damaged
by shelling. "We hope it will work out, we really do," he said as
he stood on a hillside, Latakia around 20km behind him and the
sound of a nearby battle reverberating. "It's up to God. It's out
of our control."

Conversations with Syria's newest refugees are often snatched and
guarded. Trust is hard won, if it's obtained at all. Eyes are
averted. Contact is perfunctory.

War has settled into an eerie rhythm in this part of Syria. While
rebels are now at Latakia's northern doorstep, an advance 20km
south to the heart of the city will take significant planning and
manpower, perhaps more than the rebel army, drawn largely from
the rural poor, can muster.

An invasion in any sort of formation is well beyond the
opposition army's capabilities, even with a reorganisation of the
fragmented leadership's command into groups tasked with
coordinating and acting strategically.

"It won't be fast and it won't be easy," said a leader of the
rebels' military council, who not long ago owned large and
lucrative quarries in the Idlib hinterland. His business
interests have since been confiscated and he claimed to be as
penniless as the defector sitting cross-legged on the barren
floor next to him, a private in the Syrian army who fled his post
in Jisr al-Shughour last month. "I don't care what it takes," the
officer said. "As long as we beat al-Qaida to Latakia."

In this room, a former Syrian army outpost, and in others like it
in the northern countryside of Syria, the working theory is that
Assad and his senior officials are keeping a corridor open to
Latakia from the south-east – a line that traces the Alawite
heartland of the country, past Hama, then Homs, and ending in
Damascus.

"They are preparing for a worst-case scenario," one rebel offered
as an explanation. "If it goes badly for the Alawites, they will
want a country of their own."

"Do you think it's going badly for them?" another man asked.
"This is going to continue for another year. They will wear us
down."

Another man joined in, struggling to be heard above a now
increasing din of voices. "Another year, we'll all be dead. That
is too much. May God punish Bashar and all his family."

The conversation was now drowned by shouting. Goals and realities
seemed almost irreconcilable at this point in the group's battle
planning. There seems little way forward except more of the same
grinding, miserable suffering that has come to characterise the
war in the north.

"But we must get it together. We just must," the rebel leader
finally piped up. "You in the west ask us why it is going like
this and then you refuse to help us. Latakia is a price worth
paying. There is no way Bashar can win the war if he loses
there."

We spoke by phone to a merchant in Latakia on Saturday. He runs
restaurants on the coastline and an import business through the
nearby port. "Jet skis are on the ocean and people are smoking
[water pipes]," he said. "Yes, there are planes and bombs in the
distance. But for now it's our new reality. We are getting used
to it. If they get any closer, we'll leave."